


I Wonder What I'd Be

by BethNottingham



Series: Doctor Who What-Ifs [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Development, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Coming of Age, Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Inspiration, Male-Female Friendship, Plans For The Future, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21909718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNottingham/pseuds/BethNottingham
Summary: "I wonder what I'd be without those drums?""I wonder what I'd be without you."The Doctor's memories of his childhood with the Master, and how they came to be where they were when Gallifrey hung in Earth's sky and Wilfred Mott packed a revolver. Friendship, somewhat dark themes, no romance. A story in four parts.Cross-posted to Fanfiction
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who)
Series: Doctor Who What-Ifs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578121
Kudos: 10





	1. Night and Time and Universe

**Author's Note:**

> "I swear I've read a story just like this before!" Why yes, yes you have. It was originally posted to Fanfiction, and then for a while I had it on my other AO3 account to play with the formatting on here. However, now that I'm moving my best stuff over here, I wanted my pen names to match fully, so that people can find things more easily. The version on another AO3 account will be deleted once this is posted, so it should probably be gone by the time anyone's even reading this note. I promise I'm not plagiarizing myself, lol.
> 
> The story is tagged with graphic descriptions of violence - this occurs in the fourth and final chapter, with a more specific warning in the notes.

_“That noise… the drums, Doctor. Would they stop, then?” The Doctor gazed sadly at his old friend, knowing that the answer was probably “no,” but determined to try everything in his power anyway. He was the Doctor—he didn’t just go around giving up on people._

_“All these years,” the Master mused quietly. “I wonder… what would I be without that noise?”_

_The Doctor’s eyes and throat burned as he contemplated his old friend, twisted and damaged and bent into the menacing shape who now stood before him. The Master made eye-contact with him, and for a moment he saw fear and vulnerability and brokenness, and the terrified ghost of his oldest friend looking out the irises of the monster she’d become._

-0-

He remembered that day—the day everything had changed. They had left their families not twelve hours prior, and all the children in the group were just beginning to stabilize after the brief, tearful goodbyes they had been permitted. Koschei had stayed near him, clearly a little concerned, since Theta was—for possibly the first time since he’d learned to speak—silent. He knew that his friend was just excited—she’d never really been close to her family, and she’d always looked forward to the Academy.

He appreciated that she was trying to be sensitive and toning it down, but he’d hoped that somehow her uncrushable enthusiasm would rub off on him and soothe the ache of bidding farewell to his family and the fear of the initiation he was about to endure. But as they all sat in orderly lines, trying futilely not to fidget, he found himself picking up a lot more on the restless fear of the other initiates, rather than the eternal exuberance of his best friend.

As Rassilon blathered on and on about the solemnity of this ceremony, the way it impacted the rest of their nearly immortal lives, and so on and so forth, Theta tried in vain to swallow. His throat was drier than that time Enkiri dared him to eat sand, and his stomach was clenching painfully. Both of his hearts throbbed horribly in his throat, and he was pretty sure he was going to be sick. He couldn’t puke now, in front of everyone. He’d go down in history as the most pathetic novitiate in his class. He tried and failed again to swallow.

“Doesn’t Rassilon’s head look like a lumein seed?” Koschei whispered out the side of her mouth. “All silver and fuzzy and round?”

Theta forced himself to regard it critically. It was a better option than being violently sick all over the marble floor of the foyer. It _did_ look a little like a lumein seed, he decided. On his third attempt, he was able to swallow a little bit.

“Maybe it’ll rain, and he’ll grow a sprout,” he whispered back, pleased at how steady his voice sounded.

“Maybe a giant bird will swoop down and gobble him up by mistake,” Koschei suggested with a silent laugh.

“Maybe he has fruit growing from his arms—and that’s why his sleeves are so big,” Theta added.

“Hush up!” Illori hissed, just in time, as Rassilon approached the front of the line. Clearly he’d commanded them to follow him, because Illori turned and walked after him, and Koschei whispered “here goes nothing!” and followed her in turn.

“ _Please don’t let me throw up_ ,” Theta prayed pitifully under his breath, trying to focus on the ridiculous haircut Koschei had given herself, and nothing else in the whole of the universe. She’d gotten tired of having to wash and comb and braid it all the time, so last week she’d hacked it all off. Her scandalized mother had tried her best to even it out, but she still wound up looking a bit like an unkempt mushroom. He trained his eyes on the dark brown mess as he trudged through the sand, willing it to block everything else from his mind.

It didn’t work.

When they reached their destination, Rassilon had them wait just behind a ridge—they would each approach the Untempered Schism alone, accompanied by two elders. Although Illori had arrived first, on account of her family name being at the beginning of the Gallifreyan alphabet, Rassilon chose to start taking novitiates by order of their grades in school, so the process appeared almost random. That was both a relief and a source of further terror for Theta, who got excellent marks—he didn’t want to go so soon, he wasn’t ready, but he did want to get it over with.

“Guess we’ll see who scored higher in that last vector calculus exam,” Koschei whispered, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.

“We both know I totally beat you,” Theta breathed back out of habit. “You were up all night playing in the west dunes beforehand*.”

“I don’t need to study!” Koschei protested.

“Maybe, but you do need—”

The first novitiate’s agonized scream cut him off.

Suddenly, he couldn’t swallow again.

“Theta,” Koschei hissed. He realized belatedly that he’d been standing frozen for several seconds. “Thete! That’s you!” Rassilon had called his name a few seconds ago, he gathered from the expressions on the other novitiates’ faces.

He was going to be sick, he just knew it. He felt Koschei’s hand on his shoulder blade, applying only slight pressure, trying to encourage him forwards. His knees nearly buckled, but he managed somehow to walk—albeit at a slow, timid pace—from the group, up the hill, and then down into the little valley where the two elders waited on either side of the massive opening of the Untempered Schism.

He kept his eyes on his feet as he crept forwards, knowing that as soon as he made eye-contact with it, the Vortex would pour uncontrollably into his head, and it would begin. He knew he was right on top of the thing when he saw the hems of the elders’ robes on either side of him, out of his peripheral vision. He closed his eyes, and made one more attempt to swallow.

‘At least Koschei will laugh with me if I’m the first ever novice Time Lord to vomit into time itself…’ he thought hopelessly.

Then he raised his head, took a deep breath, and flicked his eyes open.

The effect was instantaneous. More than instantaneous—it was like the vortex had begun to work on him before he’d even opened his eyes; not unlikely, since it _was_ , after all, time itself. Uncountable sensations overwhelmed him, and he heard himself screaming, but was disconnected from that tiny sound in a billion, billion worlds of sound and light and color and moving shapes.

No one had been exaggerating about how much this hurt. His nerves were trying to shut down and go into shock already, but the Schism was swallowing him up, taking over, not letting him block it out. It was like trying to drink the ocean while the ocean was being dumped over his head. He was going to die. His head was going to explode, his hearts were going to bleed out onto the sand, and he was going to die right there and then. And it had only been one second. His scream hadn’t even risen to its natural full pitch.

The children of Gallifrey had always been told to focus—try and find meaning within the vortex, try and pick out specifics, voices, faces, star alignments, anything they could later use to divine truth. But the sensory overload was simply too much; Theta couldn’t imagine he’d ever be able to pick out one voice among the infinity of universal speech.

That was, until he did hear one voice.

Not from the Schism in front of him—no, this wasn’t an echo through time, jumbling with the others in one great cacophony of pain. This was from behind him, a shout from the other side of the hill.

This voice belonged to his friend.

His very best friend in the world.

“COME ON, THETA SIGMA! SHOW THAT TIME WHO’S BOSS!”

Four seconds passed as he heard the entirety of Koschei’s shout. In that time, he clamped his mouth shut and took a deep, shuddering breath through his nose. The pain was still there, but somehow he could bear it better, perhaps because he’d had something in his timezone to contrast it. And with the strengthened endurance came extraordinary clarity.

He could still see the vastness of the universe, but suddenly it was so beautiful that he began to cry. Every song ever sung, every life every lived, every hero ever took a stand, every child brought squalling into the world, every sound, every color, every taste, every scent, and every star, and every planet, and everyone and everything that ever was.

A single teardrop rolled down his face and fell to the sand, and he heard it, heard the impact, heard the sand grains shift, heard the echo of that one drop resonate down to the planet’s core and back up again.

And it was _magnificent_.

He blinked away the next round of tears, and with his connection severed for even that split-second, he found that his moment of supernatural focus was gone. He wanted to close his eyes, but he wanted that feeling back again—he wanted to keep on beholding the universe, but he couldn’t bear the Untempered Schism for one more millisecond. So, regret burning through him in tandem with joy and inspiration and the lingering pain of sensory overload, he turned and bolted, dashing away from the vortex.

But really, he wasn’t leaving it behind, he realized as his hearts hammered and his lungs wheezed and his legs pumped, propelling him to the summit of another hill which he crested and then slid down the other side, already headed for the next one. No, he was going to see it again—bit by bit, moment by moment, song by song and hero by hero and star by star and planet by planet.

Because he was a Time Lord.

He was going to fly a TARDIS someday, travel all throughout time and space, always moving, always running, next stop: everything.


	2. Academy and Destiny and Fire

It wasn’t until after the rest of the novitiates had each had their turns—some fainting, some crying, some running off, and a very select few turning away grandly and saying that they’d had incredible visions—that the elders managed to round up all of the kids who’d bolted after their experiences. They found Theta last, sitting on the highest hill he could find, staring up into the night sky with his eyes still shining with tears, regarding each star in turn and deciding which to visit first.

Once they finally got everyone together, the elders led them back the way they'd come.

“All right, Theta?” Koschei asked absentmindedly, rubbing her temple with two fingers and squinting into the shadows.

“All right—thanks to you,” Theta responded gratefully. “You? I didn't even think to stay—I got so caught up—I'm sorry.”

“They wouldn't have let you,” Allon chipped in from behind them. “None of the initiates could return after—I tried to get back to my brother, but they made me wait on the other side.”

“Is Neryon okay?” Illori asked, glancing worriedly at Allon’s usually more energetic and outgoing twin, who was trudging along with his eyes blank, hardly seeming to notice that he was moving.

“I hope so,” Allon murmured.

“He'll be fine,” Theta encouraged his friend. “It's a lot to take in, but he'll make it.” Despite his own positive experience, he was able to acutely recall the pain of it. “Koschei? How was it for you?”

“Intense,” she responded, still rubbing her temple. “Overwhelming… exhilarating,” she admitted with a laugh. Theta smiled broadly. That was so quintessentially her.

“They're so loud, though,” she added softly as Illori held the door open for them.

“What's loud?” Theta asked in confusion. If anything, the echoey hall was eerily silent after the Schism.

“The drums,” Koschei responded with a shrug.

“What drums?” Allon asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Can't you hear them?” Koschei asked, perplexed. “Four beats, incessant, somewhere close by?”

“Can't say that I can,” Theta admitted as Allon was distracted by the need to take his twin by the hand and guide him down the stairs.

“Huh,” Koschei mused, pressing her palm against the side of her head as of trying to push the noise out.

-0-

From that day onwards, none of them were ever quite the same. But Koschei was undoubtedly the one who changed the most. She'd always been a bit off her rocker, but it was evident within a few months that she'd completely destabilized.

It started small—her humor grew darker and more abrasive, and she became more likely to laugh at the expense of any and everyone. Little innocent comments about Rassilon's head escalated to snorting with derision when Allon fell down a flight of stone stairs. She'd always been sarcastic, but as time wore on, her filters lifted, and oftener and oftener she would coolly lip off to her teachers for pettier and pettier reasons. If she'd been anyone else, everyone would have simply passed it off as immaturity—she was at “that age,” after all—but she alternated seemingly at random between “sass-and-attitude” and “sweet-angelic-little-darling.” Her ability to manipulate people was legendary before she turned twelve—and even though most of her teachers knew the disrespect and disregard of the rules of which she was capable, it usually didn't guard them against being suckerd in by her.

She'd always loved music, but she quickly became a fanatic about it, listening to it at impossible volumes in her bedroom at night—to the great irritation of Illori, with whom she shared a not-so-soundproof wall—and during the day, almost always had little silver ear bugs plugged into her ears. A boy from her floor told her she looked like a cyberwoman wearing them all the time. Shortly thereafter, he was caught hiding stolen academy property and expelled. Funnily enough, his neighbor swore for years afterwards that the thing hadn't been there from the time it was stolen to the time it was found. But no one could conclusively prove foul play, so out he went.

And all the while, her headaches grew in intensity and frequency. Sometimes she'd just double over without warning, tears in her eyes, clenching her jaw to keep the screams in. Afterwards she'd always play it cool, say that she'd made it out to be worse than it was because she wanted to get out of class or because the conversation was boring her or because whomever she was with looked so cute when they were concerned. A lot of students thought she was just a drama queen and ignored her when she dropped, but Theta had seen it get so bad her nose would bleed, seen her bite her lip so hard that blood would run down her chin, seen her clench her fists until her nails drove into her palms. He knew she wasn't faking it.

In their third year, Koschei had her first seizure. Afterwards, Theta asked to have his room switched to the one across the hall from hers; Illori tried to look after her as best she could, but it wasn't a job for one person. However, Koschei hadn't wanted anyone to know about the seizure, so he couldn't use it in his argument. Rasillon refused, saying that they were randomly assigned rooms, this was the academy, not a summer camp, and he would not cater to particular friend groups. They should be spending their free time studying, not socializing.

“But sir,” Theta pushed, “Allon and Neryon were put next to each other when Neryon was having a rough go of it—all we want is the same thing.”

“Neryon was nearly catatonic for a year,” Rasillon shot back. “Koschei’s situation is nowhere near that level of seriousness, to require special dispensation for her care. Now, return to your studies!”

Two days later, Koschei set herself on fire in the laboratory. She stood there laughing, watching her skin char, until the professor was able to douse the flames. After Time Lord science put her to rights physically, and her father was called to pay for some equipment she'd damaged, Theta found a note on his door stating that he'd been randomly reassigned—to the room across from Koschei. The scary bit was, neither Theta nor Illori knew for sure if Koschei had done it for that reason, or just for the hell of it.

Scarier still, Theta wasn't even sure Koschei knew herself.

That was the only time he knew of that she'd deliberately harmed herself, but overall she generally became a more violent person. As Neryon slowly recovered, he spoke with a stammer. There was a boy down the hall—Radjen—who was always imitating him. Some of the other students laughed, some sighed at the cruel immaturity of it.

When Koschei caught him doing it, she broke his nose without hesitation.

When the students did case studies on other cultures’ histories, Koschei had this of way of writing her criticisms of various cruel dictators as good-natured critiques, stating that they could have more easily controlled the populations in this or that way. When they did projects on how to prevent major conflict in as few steps as possible, she always started by locating one or more key figures and having them assassinated as young children. Objectively, Theta could see her point with a few of them—Hydroflax, Davros, Hitler—but it disturbed him how often his friend advocated murder. It was like she saw the universe through a lens tinted with violence. When he'd propose a method involving appealing to the participants’ better natures, she'd laugh fondly and call him “Gandhi,” after an old Earth man who'd preached love and nonviolence. She found it admirable (well, she'd said “darling” but he was pretty sure she'd _meant_ admirable _)_ in him, but couldn't seem to understand how to do it herself.

He vividly remembered one day, he'd come into her room and found her lying on the floor in a heap, more blood dripping slowly from her nose, but unlike her usual attacks, her face wasn't screwed up with pain. Instead, she lay limp, tears running from her eyes to soak into the carpet, with an expression of such pain and grief and exhaustion and despair that Theta felt his own hearts ache terribly in empathy. Silently, he knelt down, wiped away the blood and tears, and then, knowing there was nothing else he could do, gently pulled her up into a seated position so that he could wrap her in his arms.

He sat there holding her—crying a little himself—for over an hour, neither of them speaking, neither of them moving, except when he'd occasionally shift to wipe a strand of her hair out of her face or dry another tear.

“It's so… _heavy_ ,” she finally moaned. Theta only nodded. It wasn't like he could truthfully say he understood. Days like this, when her misery was at it's greatest, it seemed to him almost as though she had the weight of every living soul on Gallifrey crushing down on her. No one was meant to bear so much, were they?

Then other times she'd barricade herself into the room and turn up the music, but Illori could still hear that she was hurling her furniture at the walls. She'd needed the most replacement room furnishings out of anybody in their year. And more often than not, one could hear the pattern of her swings: one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four.

After a particularly nasty day in class where she'd presented on how Janos the Merciless could've extended his reign twice as far and wiped out eight more species before his demise, Neryon sat next to Theta in the library and asked him quietly, “if K-Koschei goes off the edge, f-for real, what will you do?”

Theta thought he should've been outraged at the suggestion that his best friend would actually snap and turn evil, but the look in Neryon’s eyes was compassionate; he might have been questioning her, but he was her friend too.

“If that happens—and I'm not saying it will, but _IF_ it did—then I'll just... save her,” Theta promised. And although he didn’t believe it would be necessary, he meant every word.


	3. Hoping and Planning and Flying

Time marched onwards, and suddenly, it seemed, it was the month before their graduation ceremony. Theta had just failed his TARDIS pilot's exam for the second time. He just kept getting excited and trying to run around and pull all the levers himself—thereby impeding the other five students taking the test. They were all in his room—Koschei, Allon, Neryon and Illori, trying to cheer him up, or at least get his mind off of it.

“I think I'll be The Caretaker,” Neryon mused, thumbing through his Abnormal Psychology textbook. After his own experience with brain damage, he'd studied up on the subject, and had a real aptitude for therapy.

“The Watcher,” Allon chimed in. He'd developed incredible alacrity in monitoring timelines—he could catch a fixed point before it was fixed, a skill that the seers were all too excited to have available to them.

“Any ideas yet, Illori?” Koschei asked from her position sprawled on Theta’s bed, propped up on her elbows. Ten years of school, growing up and pressure from her parents at their yearly visits had not yet convinced her to let her hair touch her shoulders. As Illori started explaining her three options, Koschei glanced sympathetically at Theta. It was a mark of their friendship that she'd known why this vein of conversation would upset him all over again before they'd even really started in on it—but it was a mark of her respect for him as an individual that she didn't immediately say, “let's not talk about this—it's upsetting Theta,” like he couldn't handle his friends’ success in the shadow of his own failure.

“I vote ‘Star-Chaser’ myself, but ‘Sky-Weaver’ is cute too,” Theta suggested when Illori looked around for opinions.

“If you call yourself ‘Rain Flyer,’ I'll call you ‘Duckling’ for the rest of your life, and ensure that it is engraved on your tomb,” Koschei laughed. Illori threw a cushion at her, which she deftly caught and used to help prop herself up.

“What about you, Thete?” Illori asked. Theta stalled for a moment, pretending to be finishing a sentence in the essay he was halfheartedly working on.

“I'd thought maybe The Traveler or The Wanderer or something,” he finally had to admit. “But…”

“Oh, your test,” Illori gasped. “I'm so sorry—I forgot.”

“Nah, it's okay,” Theta shrugged. “It's something I have to think about soon, anyway. We graduate in less than four weeks, after all. I need a backup plan.”

“No, you NEED to learn how to fly a TARDIS right,” Koschei contradicted calmly. “You can't let one test be the only thing that holds you back from what you were always meant to do.”

“It's not that I'm bad at it,” he sighed. “I just keep trying to grab things from other people’s consoles. I'm really very good—I see the lights flashing and know what the alarms mean before they do, that's all. Then I get benched for disrupting the test.”

“Well, could you do it with two?” Koschei asked, sitting up and surveying him critically.

“I dunno—maybe I could,” Theta responded in confusion. “Maybe I could do it alone, too—but I can’t pass the test. At this point, I think anyone seeking to test in would protest if I was in their group, since I’ve wrecked things for ten other people so far.”

“But what if you could take the test alone, or with just one other person?” Koschei pressed. “Could you still fly it then? All you really have to do is prove to the administrators that you’re capable of actually flying a TARDIS; I’m willing to bet that they’ll ignore ‘Does Not Play Well With Others’ in favor of ‘Epic Skills and Boss Points.’”

“Dunno if ‘Boss Points’ necessarily help you pass the TARDIS exam,” Allon said with a snort.

“She’s got a point, though,” Illori said quietly. “What if the two of you took it together? Koschei could sign in, take a nap, and you could take a TARDIS for a spin, and once they see that you can fly it all by your lonesome, I bet they’d pass you—probably fast-track you into the Explorer Program. If you can do it, that is.”

“He can do it,” Koschei shrugged, with about the same tone she’d use to indicate that she stored milk in her refrigerator and bread in her cupboard; like it was a simple, obvious thing.

“If they let me take it with two,” Theta said slowly. Now that the idea had taken hold, it was like a voracious weed, digging its roots deep into his hearts, winding through his veins, spreading hope like countless spores to revitalize every cell in his body. What if he could do that? Illori had a good point; they might just streamline his application to the E.P. if he could prove his flight skills.

“If they don’t, then take it with six,” Neryon said simply. “Us, you, and one more—ask Zenio from the fifth floor, he won’t care. Then once we’re off, the five of us will just sit down and let you do all the work.”

“Like you do, in advanced nanorobotics?” Allon laughed. Neryon stole the pillow from Koschei and flung it at his twin.

“If I try to help him, I just get in the way,” he defended. Theta shrugged, not able to contradict him. Neryon was brilliant when it came to people, but a bit of a dunce with software and moving parts. It was lovely to have him as a lab partner though—he could work on whatever he pleased and Neryon would chat away with him and keep him company and act like he knew what was going on when the professor came over.

“We serious about this?” Illori asked, pulling out her tablet.

“No, never knowingly be serious!” Koschei reprimanded. “But we're certainly doing it.”

“I'll sign us up, then,” Illori said with a shrug, starting to tap buttons.

-0-

Theta’s hands were sweaty. He rubbed them against his robes, trying to get the moisture off. This had sounded like such a good idea three days ago, but now that he'd spent so many hours in the practice modules, using his friends’ logins so he could fly all six consoles at once, he was really starting to worry. He'd crashed the module more than he landed it.

Without someone to officially navigate, he'd have to direct manually on each console. That wasn't impossible, but it meant he'd had to memorize about four dozen different formulas per location. He'd decided in advance where he was going to go—Earth, 1869 AD, because it was the year and planet Gandhi was born, so, why not? Sol was also an easy system to get too—eight formulas shorter than the next shortest.

The next difficulty was how to hold down levers on opposing consoles. He'd have to do it twice on the way there and three times on the way back. He'd also need to be able to hit some buttons from awkward angles—and they tended to be difficult to get all the way down if they weren't pushed from directly in front. The solution to extending his reach and his force came in the form of a medium-sized rubber mallet—a souvenir that Allon had gotten from some primitive culture they'd visited on a field trip. He'd gotten it because he thought it would be a funny weapon against spiders, but quickly discovered that it damaged surfaces more often than spiders. But Theta could slip it through lever handles to hold them down, and use it to hammer down buttons that he couldn't reach.

He knew that technically, even if there was an emergency and he screwed up, his friends had all been through the required basic training, but then whole point of taking the test like this was to prove that he might not have been able to fly the way he was supposed to, but he could fly so well that the institution should make an exception and give him his license anyway. That wasn't going to happen if he had help. If he was going to convince them to bend the rules, he'd need to really impress them.

He swallowed.

A TARDIS, disguised as a Dorruk Subway entrance, materialized on the landing platform, and six students filed out, looking successful.

“TARDIS test, group 263, please enter…” a bored time lady announced from the door in a droning monotone. Theta bolted to his feet and headed into the TARDIS, his friends following suit at a more normal pace. The moderator’s eyes focused on him, and he could see the bolt of recognition go through her mind. She straightened up, blinking and then narrowing her eyes, no doubt remembering his three impressive failures.

“Hello,” he greeted her with a passable imitation of friendliness. “Fourth time’s the charm, isn’t that what they say?”

“Not remotely,” she responded humorlessly, scanning his team a little more closely, then sighing in defeat. “Just remember to keep your hands on your own console,” she grumbled. “Otherwise you’ll fail everyone. Again.”

“Oh, no worries,” Koschei assured her with the devilish grin for which she’d become institutionally famous. “He’s got a handle on this.” She clapped her friend on the shoulder, then headed to a console, not really paying attention to which one.

“Are these the consoles for which each of you will be testing?” the monitor asked, taking a step back and sitting down in a chair from which—with the help of a few strategically-placed mirrors—she could comfortably observe all of the proceedings.

“No, actually,” Neryon replied evenly, and at his nod, everyone but Theta took their own steps back, sitting down on the benches surrounding the console. “We were just here to get him in the door.”

“Right!” Theta exclaimed, clapping his hands together and springing forward before the test monitor had the chance to get her bearings. “Time to take her out for a spin. First, a destination,” he continued, spinning a dial in a way that appeared wild, but in actuality he’d practiced for hours to learn the exact amount of force it took to get the navigation to point to earth.

“Earth,” he announced as the blue and green planet appeared on the screen. “The year 1869, AD, by the Christian calendar.”

“Wait,” the monitor began as her faculties returned to her and she realized what was about to happen.

“Let’s go!” Theta roared, mainly just to have something to say to cut her off, and with a flourish slammed his hand on the “dematerialize” button.

“First, we’ll need coordinates,” he exclaimed, narrating what he was doing largely because he had started off that way and it felt odd to stop now. Besides, as he would realize later, he always felt more powerful, more in control, when he was talking, explaining something.

“Spatial coordinates!” he threw two dozen switches to their correct positions.

“Outer Temporal coordinates!” frantically he typed in the formula for the Christian Calendar’s AD era. The whole TARDIS shook and wobbled as it began to spin through time. This was where things got complicated. The moment he’d finished typing, Theta slid to his left, punching in a code and simultaneously using the mallet, which he produced from beneath his robe, to whack the massive engage button on the opposite console.

“Route Stabilizers active!” he announced as the shaking decreased.

“You can’t do this alone!” the monitor was shrieking.

“Shut it!” Koschei bellowed. “Don’t distract him or he’ll crash and kill the lot of us!”

Although her outburst had the intended effect on the stunned time-lady, who appeared a bit too green and faint to step in, it hit Theta like a punch to the gut. It hadn’t occurred to him until just then, the risk he was taking with his friends onboard. What if something went wrong?

The TARDIS made a distressed moaning sound and his body leapt back into action out of raw instinct. Suddenly, this flight wasn’t just about his dream, or showing off, or anything so insignificant. It was about protecting his friends. And if there was anything at which he truly excelled, that was it.

“External dampeners!” he shouted, sliding again, dropping the mallet flawlessly into a lever to pull it down and running his hand under a row of switches to flick them all upward, artfully stopping before the last three. “Lock down the zig-zag plotter, engage gravity detector, input era coordinates,” he listed a little manically as he darted around the hexagon, retrieving the mallet, smacking something, inputting another string of codes while threading the mallet through another lever.

“Prep camouflage program!” he jammed his thumb and forefinger into two buttons. “Setting specific temporal zone… Second October, 1869,” he read as he typed.

“Reset stabilizers, disperse temporal residue, scan for parking space, and,” he whirled, surreptitiously depressing a button behind his back to make it look like he was actually pausing for a moment. He held his finger up, then pointed at the discombobulated moderator. “Engage. Landing. Stabilizers.” He said nonchalantly, before using that finger to push one last lever up to the “on” position.

With a great groaning and wheezing, the TARDIS slowed, then stopped, then fell silent.

A thin wisp of steam escaped from somewhere on the console, releasing pressure. Theta looked at each of his friends, then at the moderator, before striding down the walkway to fling the door wide.

“Madame moderator,” he announced, his eyes going wide as it hit him that he’d done it— _he’d actually done it_ —“welcome to planet Earth.”

Granted, he could tell by the climate, language and garments that he’d managed to land them on completely the wrong side of the planet (this was clearly London, not Pormandar) but still, he’d done it.

“Theta Sigma,” the time-lady murmured as she got her bearings. “That was stupid and dangerous. You broke every rule of the TARDIS test and put all of us in unnecessary peril.

But,” she added as Theta’s shoulders fell, “yes. Yes, you’ve done it. You can, in fact, fly a TARDIS, on manual, no less, entirely on your own.”

Theta looked up at her, then at his friends’ triumphant grins, then back at her.

“You’re wrong,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” she demanded, one eyebrow arching higher than any eyebrow had any business arching.

“I didn’t do it alone,” he explained. “I piloted the TARDIS, yes, but I was only able to do it because of everyone here.”

The test moderator’s eyes narrowed again, but thoughtfully this time. She placed a hand on Theta’s shoulder.

“You have great potential, child,” she commented enigmatically before heading back to her seat.

“ _I_ could’a told you that,” Koschei snorted as Theta carefully shut the door and headed back to the console for the return trip.


	4. Loving and Healing and Choosing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to the final chapter. This one contains a description of violence. *I* don’t think it’s terribly graphic, but I have a *very* high tolerance for such things. For a specific, spoiler-y explanation, scroll to the bottom and read the note there.

“You flew it single-handed?” Theta’s mother exclaimed for the third time.

“Technically, he used both hands. And his foot. And a big mallet,” Koschei listed, flopping down on Theta’s bed and interrupting his video call with his parents. “Hi, Thete’s mom,” she added, waving cheekily and looking at the couple upside-down.

“Still,” Theta’s father sighed, rubbing his head in shock. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Well…” Theta hemmed, “until now, it wasn’t. Leastways, _nobody_ knew it was possible. Apparently, I’m the first to do it successfully.”

“That’s… that’s something,” his father exclaimed, clearly having no idea what to say.

“That’s incredible,” his mother supplied. “But incredibly dangerous.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Theta grinned, “but if there’s ever an emergency, I’ll never be stuck anywhere for want of copilots.”

“Plus, he can fly me places,” Koschei added, rolling over onto her stomach. “Since I can’t pilot my way out of the dining hall.”

“In fairness, you won’t need to pilot in the Strategic Division,” Theta reminded her.

“In fairness, you could fuse the controls so I could at least get from point A to point B without crashing,” Koschei responded.

“In fairness, that’s cheating,” Theta’s mother snickered, “and therefore not fair at all.”

“Killjoy,” Koschei stuck her tongue out, before closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. Theta saw the movement, and knew where it was headed from so many times before.

“Well, speaking of killing joy, we’ve got finals in the morning,” he said lightly, “so we should probably study. I’ll see you both at the naming ceremony,” he added. The family exchanged their goodbyes, and he quickly switched off the screen just in time to avoid transmitting Koschei falling into a seizure.

As he had so many times before, he quickly scooted forward, wrapping his arms around her and bracing her head against his shoulder so she wouldn’t bash it against anything. Her flailing limbs beat harmlessly against Theta’s mattress, but she did manage to elbow him rather painfully a few times. When the fit passed, she lay limp in his arms, struggling to breathe.

“Have they looked at your—” Theta started, but Koschei cut him off with an exhausted sigh.

“Yes, Thete, they’ve looked at my everything. Twice. The best doctors on Gallifrey have given up on me. You’re the first person to fly a TARDIS alone in Gallifrey’s history, and I’m the first hopeless case in Gallifrey’s medical history.” She laughed humorlessly, trying to maneuver herself so she was sitting up unaided. Theta had to practically lift her off of him, but between them they managed to balance her in a vaguely sitting position.

“You can’t be,” Theta assured her instantly. “No one’s beyond fixing. I don’t believe in hopeless cases, especially not with you, Kos.”

“Of course you don’t,” Koschei laughed. “You’re the eternal optimist. Always reaching out for the stars, dreaming of the impossible.”

“And how often have I been wrong, eh?” he responded with a light dig at her ribs. “That you can prove,” he added quickly, eliciting a laugh from his exhausted friend.

Later he would spend so much time—centuries, in fact—kicking himself for not noticing the hardness in her eyes, or the disgusted set of her mouth. He would wonder his whole long life how things might’ve gone differently if he’d talked to her longer, if they’d had a real conversation that night, if he’d asked how she saw the future, if he’d only seen… but even a Time Lord couldn’t go back on his personal timeline, so he would never know.

What did, in fact, happen, was that after Koschei had her breath back, she’d returned to her room and fallen asleep, and Theta had rearranged himself on his bed and did the same. They took their final exams and passed them with flying colors, partied with their friends the night before graduation and got up uncomfortably early the next day to welcome their families for the ceremony.

“So, Traveler or Wanderer?” Illori asked as she took a seat beside Theta, notebook with her name-choosing speech clutched in her hands. Rassilon was ascending the platform, preparing to make his customary boring address.

“Star-Chaser or Sky-Weaver?” he returned with a smirk.

“Duckling,” Koschei muttered from his other side.

“Shut it, Kos,” Illori shot back, sticking out her tongue.

“Aren’t we all so mature,” Theta chuckled, grabbing his friends’ hands and lacing their fingers together.

“Oh, _so_ mature,” Neryon snorted.

“ _Obviously_ ready to pick what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives,” Allon added.

“You must remember,” Rassilon droned, “this is a time of humility. You are entering the next phase of your lives, but you by no means know everything. The learning process has only just begun.”

“What a rip-off,” Allon grumbled. “Isn’t the whole point of this ceremony to prove we’re done with school, and worthy of recognition by the ‘real adults’?”

“They never will,” Koschei whispered. “Not unless we _make_ them.”

“Yeah, well,” Theta responded, “that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s why we do things like fly a TARDIS without copilots or become the youngest Seer ever appointed; to prove that we can.”

Koschei rested her head against Theta’s shoulder.

“I love you, you ridiculous optimist,” she murmured.

Then she stood, and as Rassilon left the stage, she ascended it.

This wasn’t exactly unusual—no one called them, they just stood when they were ready. What _was_ unusual was that she carried no notes. Theta realized she’d never once said what she was planning on calling herself; was she about to make arguably the most important speech of her life off the cuff?

Koschei stood in the center of the stage, surveying the watching crowd with an air of looking down her nose, observing others on high. It was a mode she’d adopted more and more during presentations and such in her later years—somehow, even though both she and Theta were, more often than not, the cleverest people in the room and confused their listeners, Theta usually managed to do it less haughtily.

“Years ago, I looked into the Time Vortex,” she began. It was a surprisingly normal beginning. Inspirational visions from initiation often inspired Time Lord’s chosen names. “And the Time Vortex looked into me. We gazed upon each other, and we knew one another.

“And it chose me.” The crows rustled uncomfortably.

“Since that time,” she continued, unperturbed, “it has always been with me. The drums of war, inside my head, part of me. Time itself is sending me on a mission—to make those drums a reality. It is my destiny, and it has been on my shoulders for oh, so long.

“I will be Master, of all the universe,” she declared, spreading her arms wide. “And someday you will all bow down before me. I have seen it. I still see it—burned into my eyes and pounding, pounding, _pounding_ in my head!

“This world, and every world…” she whispered, but her voice carried through the shocked silence, louder and clearer than a shout. “I am the one who will conquer it. I will hold the vastness of creation in the palm of my hand.” She lifted a shaking fist towards the audience to illustrate her point. “And I will be its Master.”

For a long moment, one could have heard a pin drop as everyone held their breath, waiting for the punch line, the explanation, the part where they all woke up from such a hideous, dreadfully un-funny dream.

“Wouldn’t it be The Mistress, Kos?” Illori joked finally with a nervous laugh, clearly hoping that this was just a poorly planned joke on Koschei’s part like so many things before; tasteless, but harmless. It was just such a shame that nobody had noticed just how not harmless she really was.

The next eight seconds would replay in Theta’s head for the rest of his life, incessant and maddening as Koschei’s drumbeats.

Koschei reached a hand into the pocket of her robes, and pulled out a small black object. Theta recognized it—a souvenir she’d taken from Earth. It was a 19th Century Smith & Wesson six shooter, to be precise.

She pulled back the hammer with a heavy metallic click, and looked each of her friends in the eye.

She smiled, and the blazing madness in her eyes that Theta had been missing, ignoring and rationalizing for years burned bright.

She lifted the barrel of the gun and pressed it to the side of her head.

Her eyes flicked over the crowd, and she pulled her head back a little, lifting her chin proudly again, looking down at them, her face haughty and beautiful and whole for the last time.

She pulled the trigger, and in the tense silence the resulting bang was so loud that for a split-second Theta thought his own skull had shattered, but it was only hers, hideously smashed outwards, a violent fountain of red spilling out from the left side.

Then, face frozen in the mad, haughty expression, but a bit distorted from the holes in her skull, she crumpled backwards, landing in an ungainly heap on the floor.

The silence after the gunshot was deafening. It reverberated through the space like a wave of energy, and it was followed by an actual blast of energy as Koschei’s first regeneration cycle began.

After that, events unfolded with dizzying speed. The Master’s legs lengthened and his hair shrank back into his skull—what little of it there was to begin with. Horrified whispers flowed through the crowd, gaining volume and anger. By the time Theta could convince his stunned brain to move his legs and stand, the voices had swollen to a general roar of outrage. Such disrespect for such a solemn ceremony! Such a disgrace for the family!

But then Theta was vaulting onto the platform, falling to his knees beside her, his robe slowly wicking up blood where he was kneeling in the pool of it as he pressed his ear to first the left, then the right side of the Master’s chest, listening to the healthy twin heartbeats and nearly fainting in relief when he felt the young man beneath him stir and draw breath.

As The Master’s new eyes blinked open for the first time—warm brown, framed by thick lashes, yet still alight, nearly feverish—somewhere in the background, Rassilon was ordering for the young Time Lord to be removed, taken away and committed. Theta’s hearts pounded painfully against one another, and he was glad he was already kneeling—there was no strength in his legs—but he still managed to brush his fingers against his friend’s newly intact temples, checking that the internal damage had healed. The Master’s synapses were firing perfectly; minus the drumbeats, his brain was perfect.

Of course, what theta saw inside of it as he pulled away was another story. The pain of realizing just how damaged his friend had become, _right under his nose,_ cut him to the bone. He’d failed him. They were meant to be the best of friends, they were meant to support each other… everything The Master had done for him, every time he’d been there for him, and this… He’d missed this. Probably because of how very, very much he’d wanted her to be okay, in spite of everything.

Stupid, stupid optimism.

His foot moved, and something clattered. He’d nudged the gun; the cold metal felt like a vicious, malicious living thing even through the toe of his boot, and he kicked it away in revulsion, nausea gripping him just from having touched it. Guns may have been primitive, nowhere near as destructive as other weapons throughout the universe, but in that moment he knew he’d never be able to touch one without pain again.

Then there were footsteps, guards ascending the stage, and he remembered what Rassilon had just ordered. He wasn’t sure how exactly he managed to stagger to his feet, but suddenly he was standing, words boiling up from his mouth.

“Can’t you see she’s sick?” he demanded furiously. “She’s been ill since she was a child, overwhelmed by the Time Vortex. Perhaps she’s mad and perhaps she’s dangerous but she needs help, not jack-booted thugs hauling her off because you can’t handle her!” His voice echoed and boomed in a way it never had before, filling the chamber and drowning out all of the others.

“We have all failed her.” His voice nearly broke at that, but he managed to keep going strong. “The Master’s actions are the product of a sick and broken world,” he insisted. “And the sick and the broken don’t need to be punished—they need to be fixed. And that’s why…” he gulped, somehow finding his mother’s eyes through the crowd, knowing this was madness all of his own, that it was the most important moment in his young life and it was not remotely going as planned.

“That’s why I will forever be called The Doctor. Because I will always be there to fix it, to heal the hurt and put things right.”

There was more uproar of course, but it was like The Doctor’s declaration had created sort of shield around them. As he half supported, half lifted The Master and helped him off the stage, the hubbub continued without them.

He didn’t look back, but he got the strong impression that his mother was smiling, nearly glowing with pride. Perhaps his outburst hadn’t been unexpected to everyone in the room.

“‘Master,’ really?” he muttered as they headed to the infirmary. Behind them, Rassilon was ordering everyone to settle down, getting someone to clean the stage, and trying to proceed with the ceremony.

“It’s not half so silly as Doctor,” his friend slurred, but gripped his shoulders tight with unfamiliar hands. In that moment, The Doctor allowed himself to believe that everything would still be all right.

Stupid, stupid optimism. But he couldn’t bear to have it any other way.

-0-

_“That noise… the drums, Doctor. Would they stop, then?_

_“All these years,” The Master mused quietly, his voice weaker than it had been since childhood, and choked with raw emotion. “I wonder… what would I be without that noise?”_

_The Doctor’s eyes bored into his old friend’s; Koschei’s hadn’t changed since they first looked into the vortex. They still burned with the light of madness, even in moments like this one when he was on the verge of tears._

_“I wonder what_ I’d _be,” Theta responded wistfully, “without you?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s it folks! I hope you enjoyed it.
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> The warning mentioned at the beginning: Koschei shoots herself in the head, knowing that she will regenerate (so it’s not suicide as such. It does, however, indicate a severe issue with her mental state, which is directly and publicly addressed by the Doctor immediately after). As far as the level of graphic-ness, there is a lot of blood and mentions of distortion to her skull.


End file.
